In interest of putting a face on some of these things, I've added some visuals to the lists. They should enlarge when you click on them, but I make no promises, as my technical skills are less than garbage.
Note: I didn't include pictures or videos for film editing or the sound categories, because I don't really know how to capture film editing compellingly in a way that didn't wast either my time or yours, and I don't have the resources to make audio clips for the sound categories (which I would love to do every year #soundeditingforever).
Production Design
5. Shadow-monochrome yin-yang fantasies, a perpetually cold and dripping world, everything falling off a jet black cliff at sharp angles.
4. The Lighthouse-much credit has been given to another film whose sets were famously built from scratch (which we'll certainly get to in a moment), but less has been said about the equally mind-boggling achievement of construction for The Lighthouse, in which everything you see on screen was physically constructed for the movie. It's a proper little maritime hell, full of coal dust and fetid mattresses, pocketed by walls built to let the wind in.
3. 1917-gets that the world needs to feel like a primordial hellscape, all mud and bones and rats trapped in coiled wires. It's somewhat rare to get a war movie that feels as lived-in and as resolutely hideous as this one.
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2. Midsommar-incredible detail on each wall, an entire history of sunny sacrifice and ursine frolics on every surface, combined with those malevolent arches and the ubiquitous and unknowable Great Big Yellow Triangle.
1. Parasite-the biggest design story of the year, when it was revealed that all of the spaces in this movie, from the massive Kim home to the entire (floodable) street on which the Parks live, were built from scratch for the movie. That wouldn't be as impressive as it is, of course, if the spaces themselves aren't the character-defining horror opuses that they are--the Kim house's cube monstrosities and the grey sewage chains that float that linger in the walls of the Park apartment.
Honorable mention: the wonderfully over-decorated murder mystery mansion of Knives Out
Costume Design
5. Little Women-beautiful character work here, tracking Emma Watson's fancy/not-fancy/fancy-but-apologetic finery, Florence Pugh's growth from resident chaos spirit/foot model to debutante, and Saoirse Ronan's vaguely mannish anti-marriage duds.
4. Shadow-again, totally astounding what this movie accomplishes with its colorless palette-dragon armor, mentally unstable robes, and peasant guerilla chic.
3. Hustlers-a decade's worth of finery for multiple colliding worlds--the pop performative panache of the club, the undercover evening gown armor when out on the take, and that fur coat. Plus, SWIMONA.
2. Dolemite is My Name-Zany, bordering on totally insane work here. The colors like an unhinged easter basket! The hats the size of several planets! Garish and vibrant peacockish and strangely practical--a color wheel rioting across the highway.
3. Booksmart-'the costumes are the jokes' is an *extremely* difficult concept to land, but Booksmart manages to let its audience know exactly who and what they're dealing with every time we see a new outfit, while still managing to be one of the funniest parts of the movie. And what costumes! Who wouldn't want to go out for a night on the town in one of those navy jumpsuits, or the dresses that look like they were bedazzled by the devil, or the slinky vintage murder mystery gown with the plunging neckline, or a Jareds, Jareds all the way down T-shirt?
Honorable mention: festive murder-wear and the massive May Queen dress in Midsommar
Visual Effects
5. 1917--subtle but essential: all the planes, tanks, explosions, and nightmares stretching into infinity needed--as well as all the careful painting to remove all the film-making apparatuses--to create the look the movie's going for.
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4. Ad Astra-atmosphere swan dives, moon fights, mars launches, and edge-of-the-system man caves--everything you need to sort out your daddy issues in space.
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3. Godzilla: King of the Monsters-I'm sorry, like I'm not gonna get real excited about watching Godzilla slap King Ghidorah with an entire city? I can only be who I am, and who I am loves watching big ol' monsters slap each other in glorious HD.
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2. Detective Pikachu-I was initially skeptical about this movie's look, but the finished project ended up with just the right combination of cuddliness, plausibility, and the sweet sweet dreams of a 10-year old me.
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1. Avengers: Endgame-Was there any other choice? It's a bit of a week year for this category, but that doesn't mean the capper for (this part of) the Avengers era is any less deserving of the accolades. There's so much muchness, but it's always legible and, at its best, kind of breathtaking.
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Honorable mention: I dunno, the spaceships, I guess, in Star Wars: Episode IX--The Rise of Skywalker
Makeup and Hairstyling
5. Captain Marvel-another vaguely underpopulated category this year, but I'll make some room for the crunchy popcorn skrull effects. Brie Larson's 90s feathering, and Annette Bening's functional computer haircuts.
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4. Judy-I'll admit that it is fully weird that we're two in and I've yet to find something I'm super passionate about? Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, or maybe it's an off year. But sure, I'll pay my respects to Judy's Judy transformation.
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3. Us-Now we're getting somewhere! Minimalist work, but extremely effective, delineating the lines between under/over-worlders, helping us (heh) track the differences between the characters and their doppelgänger while drawing our eye to all-too-present similarities.
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2. Midsommar-Do I have this hear just for those horrific exploding falling old people heads? I mean, it's part of it, but that would discount the last-act corpse arts and crafts, the body-altering arts and crafts that look like they've been cobbled together by a child with a passion for interior design, the other great gore moments, the incest prosthetics, and all the festive braids.
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1. 1917-it's strange--gore, wounds, and other horror elements are one of the most fundamental things movie makeup delivers on the regular, but it's the aspect of makeup that least frequently gets rewarded (at least in the face of old-age makeup, celebrity impersonation makeup, and heavy prosthetics). So I'm thrilled that a movie like 1917--for which gore makeup is absolutely essential--is getting some recognition. My favorite thing about this movie is the tangible, corporeal rot and filth of it all--everything is bodies and open wounds and blood and dirt mixing together into some kind of inescapable slime. And then imagine having to make sure that, since the movie pretends to take place in real time, you have to keep those effects looking completely continuous for the entire movie. Add in the subtle work to imply exhaustion as the movie goes on, and you've got a worthy winner.
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Honorable mention: natty period dos in Little Women
Note: I feel like I should mention why I kept Bombshell out of this category, as everyone who sees that movie talks about its (soon to be Oscar-winning) makeup. Simply put--I don't know what we gain from making the characters look so much like their real-life counterparts. Sure, it's well done (or not, as John Lithgow/Roger Ailes kind of looks like Jabba the Hutt....which, ok, maybe is well done after all), but to what end? Do we really get more from this movie because Charlize Theron looks so much like Megyn Kelly? So yes, the technique is impressive, but I'm not sure it served the movie--or at least it didn't serve my experience of the movie, and this is my party, so here we are.
Film Editing
5. Synonyms-hope you're not tired of me talking about how this movie looks and feels wild and unique, cuz here I go again! The pacing of this film is so bizarre (in a good way), scenes spilling into and over each other and then off the screen with seemingly little guidance, everything cut to the relentless rhythm with which the main character rattles off his synonym lists.
4. Little Women-does a stellar job of sorting through the film's two periods and jumping between all of its major storylines, keeping all of the plates happily spinning without losing the audience.
5. Hustlers-knows when to pile on the energy and when to dial down again to take a breath. The multiple montage moments (being friends with Ramona, drugging guys, etc.) are all phenomenal.
2. Uncut Gems-This movie wants to punish you with tension, it wants you to feel sick to your stomach--and the edit is how it gets there. Uncut Gems goes from 0-100 in all of ten seconds and knows to never take its foot off the gas.
1. Parasite-arguably the high-wire act of the year, in which comedy, drama, and horror are all wound together into a candy-colored tripwire and tossed out in front of an unsuspecting audience. Each scene--even the quietest ones--manage to seem a little breathless, a little manic, as each moment stacks on top of the one before it until the whole jenga tower falls in one unholy cacophony.
Honorable mention: the languid, vaguely upsetting rhythms of Transit
Cinematography
5. 1917-Points, I suppose, for the degree of difficulty, but I'm more interested in the shifting shadows and colors of the night run, the way the sunrise pops, or how face drained of color fade into the wood, or the obsessive kinetic movement that all but knocks actors down in the final battle scenes.
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4. The Lighthouse-like a series of haunted daguerrotypes, all dank and perilous squares, greys shot through with a hateful wight light.
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3. Synonyms-A movie whose visual appeal is exceptionally difficult to capture in a picture or gif, as it's all about motion--the way that the camera tears the city apart looking for something, anything, the way characters, objects, locations drift in and out of the frame, and never exactly where you'd expect. It's the way the visuals mirror the main character's belief that the Seine is a test, and looking at the river's famously beautiful banks will keep you from discovering the truth about Paris, and so you have to avert your eyes from everything that you're expected to see.
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2. Atlantics-the sea, a solemn verdigris affair, the club, all green fireflies easily scattered, and the rest world, trapped in an ochre haze.
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1. The Last Black Man in San Francisco-life through a lens--or a few lenses, really--everything color and softness and fantasy, and time speeds up and slows down however we want it to, holding gilded age where and when it can, even when its pillow-eyes catch catch on a rusted nail or a pile of dead fish.
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Honorable mention: the alternating warm and perilous real-life tableau in Honeyland
Original Score
5. Atlantics-an unnerving and unsettling (or maybe resettling) synth soundscape from first time composer Fatima Al Qadiri--a perfect lilting elegy woven into the sea.
4. Parasite-a strangely under-celebrated element of the movie that's totally integral to its success. The Vivaldi strings chase the onscreen characters like cackling little shoulder devils.
3. Uncut Gems-an 80s educational video meets an 80s drug-fueled trip through space and smashes together into this utterly bananas mix of chanting, drums, electronica, and madness.
2. Monos-I know I've said it before, but Mica Levi has to be the most talented and/or innovative composer working in movies now, right? Just listen this movie's mix of whistles, flutes, wind sounds, low strings, and screaming electronic sounds. The result is something that feels like the voice of nature itself--the mist-bedecked mountains crying to the child soldiers scampering about them. This was almost my #1 pick (and I did have it there for most of the year, and I almost changed it back right now just listening to some of the tracks), so definitely don't miss checking this music out. (The movie itself is...good? I respect it more than I like it. Don't watch it if you're not interested in watching a whole bunch of kids die.)
1. The Last Black Man in San Francisco-ultimately, though, I couldn't give it to anything but this, one of the most beautiful compositions for movies in this (and plenty of other) years. This score has so many voices--sometimes it's lush and open, sometimes it's nothing but a few furious woodwinds chirping at each other. The vocal and choral selections are out of this world, and when everything coalesces--. It's something else. Really, this whole album should be in your playlist, but since I can't put all 26 tracks here, I will say I am extremely fond of the progression of "They lost the house?" into "Rock Fight," building, crescendoing, and then dropping all in the space of three-ish minutes.
(this takes you to a playlist that will play both of these tracks back to back. And if, y'know, you just let the playlist keep going, what harm will that do?)
Honorable mention: periennial not-bride bridesmaid Thomas Newman's propulsive work in 1917
Sound Mixing
5. Little Women-whole worlds evoked sonically, the throaty gasps of empty houses, resentment scraping across the ice, the impersonal everywhere-ness of the big city contrasted with the open sounds of The World We Wanted--and everywhere the girls' voices, tying the threads together by virtue of their own constant voiced thereness.
4. Hustlers-this could have gotten in just on its most notable sound flourishes--the way that sound processes and shapes the present-day conversation, and the way all audio but the hidden wire drops away in one pivotal scene--but Hustlers has more than that. A club that *actually sounds like a club* but is still audibly legible, constant shifting group dynamics organized by volume, and just the right levels for the near-constant needle drops.
3. 1917-in its bones, 1917 wants to be a horror movie more than it wants to be a war movie, and the sound mix is where this most obviously shines through. Consider the haunted emptiness of No Man's Land that segues into It's Only a Rat jump scares, then punctuated by some old-fashioned explosive chaos. I love how quiet this movie is (only really ramping up for its final battle scene). Consider one scene (vague so as to avoid spoilers) in which some sudden violence happens. When that violence happens, it's quiet and mundane, and the scene continues to sound quiet and mundane, despite the drama and desperation on screen--just like the in the real world, horrible things happen quickly and quietly.
2. The Nightingale-speaking of horrible things! The Nightingale is one continuous doomsday tapestry where you aren't the only thing screaming in the night--there's a whole world singing its sorrow songs to a inky black sky like a sponge. Trauma punctures the silence, but it's never really silence--if the bugs aren't screaming, the birds are, and if it's not them, it's everyone else.
1. The Lighthouse-no man is an island, but two men and a very mean bird certainly are. A soundscape that makes it all too easy to believe that anyone listening to this every day would go insane: all sea howls and guttural gales and that screaming foghorn that does not let up for even one minute for the entire movie.
Honorable mention: the sea sure is a scary place in Styx
Sound Editing
5. They Shall Not Grow Old-of the WWI sound triumphs in theaters this year, I've got to give the edge to Peter Jackson's docu-archive-chimera that recreated the soundscapes of hundreds of archive newsreels and silent film footage from the period in order to bring them to some kind of life.
4. Midsommar-for the wet, meaty slap, like the sound a seal make when it jumps into a boat, of the old man's exploding head alone, but also for the subtle moans of nature, the polite, confused swallowing of pubes, and the oh-so-satisfying primal crackle of roasting a bear suit.
3. Avengers: Endgame-I suppose at some point I've got to stop putting Avengers movies in this category, but who I am I to say no to those optimistic little time travel pops, the stentorian, city-sized rumble caused by every Marvel character in the known universe standing on top of each other, or the biblical scrape of Captain America's shield ripping apart?
2. Shadow-not entirely unlike Midsommar, this one gets in for some of its more delightful carnage sounds, like a baby helicopter careening through a city made out of overripe fruit. But there's still more to love--the inevitable clang of ridiculously sized glaive slamming into an umbrella made of knives, or the weaponized thrums of a gu zheng singing that sound characters make when they want to kill the person next to them.
1. The Lighthouse-a bevy of curséd pots, bells, sea stars, effervescent fuckable light bulbs, old man farts, and slimy rocks are dropped into Poseidon's whirling anus and they all rattle about until they can tear themselves apart.
Honorable mention: someone please be proud of me for finally not default-nominating the Star Wars movie in this category every year. ...But I'm still giving Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, because I have an addiction, and the first step is admitting I'm powerless and that my sound editing preferences have become unmanageable.
Original Song
5. "Into the Unknown"-Frozen 2-be forewarned, this category is fairly sparse (at least from the movies I've seen), so gird your loins for a whole bunch of Frozen 2, whose soundtrack, while not as good as the original, still might not deserve the drubbing it got. Who doesn't get at least a little amped listening Elsa singing about driving her car off a cliff or whatever?
4. "Lost in the Woods"-Frozen 2-Look, I love this deeply stupid 80s power ballad parody, and you can't stop me. Jonathan Groff gets his big Disney moment, backed up by a choir of singing reindeer while he does his best REO Speedwagon impression. How could I not want that?
3. "Stand Up"-Harriet-I didn't totally love the movie, but whoo boy can Cynthia Erivo sing, and this song smartly lets her do just that. A rousing and gorgeous send-off for the movie.
2. "Willow"-High Life-Robert Pattinson should be required by law to sing an end credits song for every movie he's in, and that's the objective true. That's science. High Life is a fairly bonkers movie, and by the time you hit the end credits, RPatz singing about centipedes feels as right as anything could. In all seriousness, this is a lovely and lilting song, and I've listened to it more than I have almost any other movie song from 2019.
1. "Show Yourself"-Frozen 2-I'm sorry, what else did you expect? One of my favorite scenes of the year, a massive, to-the-skies roar that absolutely titillated the closeted baby gay in my past.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md7dK5-qvHc (Note: this link is the lyric video, but if you want the scene, I link to it in the first Best of the Year post.)
Honorable mention: what a missed opportunity it was that the Academy didn't nominate "A Glass of Soju" so we could see them frantically try to stage a Parasite music number.
SUPER honorable mention: the best movie song of the year, without a doubt, objectively, is "Glasgow" from Wild Rose. It's a stone-cold banger and a huge emotional piece--it can make me vaguely teary, and I haven't even seen the movie. But, tragically, my rules keep me from nominating something from a movie that I haven't seen. So know that had I not been lazy and seen Wild Rose, it would absolutely be at the top of this list. At any rate, give it a listen yourself--I've listened to it more than any other movie song this year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-l-Ly0ly4M
Well, that's the end of the lists for the year, believe it or not (and I definitely can believe it, given the work I've put off/the time I've put in/the hurt in my stupid, aging hands). I'll be back before the Oscars to post some final predictions, but this is (for me, at least) just about the end of the 2019 cinematic year! Come Sunday it's New Years Oscar eve, and then I can finally get with the rest of the world and acknowledge that we're supposed to be living in 2020.
For those playing along at home, here are the movies that showed up most frequently in the lists:
The Lighthouse-8
Midsommar-7
Little Women-7
Parasite-6
Hustlers-6
As for wins, One Cut of The Dead won each of the two categories for which it was nominated (Picture and Original Screenplay), but three other movies also won two each: Parasite (Production Design, Film Editing), The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Cinematography, Original Score), and The Lighthouse (Sound Mixing, Sound Editing).
And that's that! Here's to a wonderful year of movies, and here's hoping for another one that's just as good! If, somehow, you're still reading, and have been reading, thanks so much! I do love the support, even if I write these just for the sake of writing them, and even if I constantly berate you in text for having the gall to sit down and read these things.
